1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to absorbent articles, such as sanitary napkins and the like, that have a concealing effect for concealing body fluids such as menstrual blood and the like, during use.
2. Related Art
Absorbent articles for absorbing body fluids such as menstrual blood and the like are generally formed of a front sheet that contacts the body and is easy for fluids to penetrate, a rear sheet, being a face opposed thereto, that is difficult for fluids to penetrate, and an absorbent body interposed between the two sheets. Moreover, the absorbent articles normally have a longitudinal direction lying in the front-back direction of a wearer when worn, and a short direction (lateral direction) lying in the left-right direction of the wearer. In these kinds of absorbent articles, in recent years the absorbency of the absorbent body is improving in order to eliminate underwear staining and the like.
When the absorbent body absorbs the body fluids, the body fluids are uniformly diffused to the front, rear, left, and right of the absorbent body by capillary action. At this time, in the above-described absorbent articles, the diffusion distance in the short direction is shorter than in the longitudinal direction. As a result, the body fluids firstly diffuse to both ends of the short direction of the absorbent body. After that, they diffuse to both ends of the longitudinal direction, at which stage the absorptive capacity of the absorbent body is reached.
However, at the stage of diffusion to both ends of the short direction, diffused body fluids migrate by body pressure to the front sheet, and in cases where the wearer visually perceives this migration, the wearer mistakenly thinks that at this stage the capacity of the absorbent body is reached. As a result, there is a problem in that article replacement is carried out without the complete absorptive capacity being reached.
In order to solve these types of problems, in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. Hei10-500048(hereinafter Patent Document 1), a masking member is arranged at a peripheral region of the absorbent body. In this way, a concealing effect is produced in the vicinity of the absorbent body, and it is possible to prevent giving an impression to the wearer that the absorbent body is in a saturated state (i.e., that it is time for replacement.)